Your Views

Keep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions.

To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin).

Your e-Mails

Dear Nicey and Wifey,
As an English tea drinking addict marooned in deepest Pennsylvania [due to husband's job] it was a delight to discover your website detailed in a precious copy of the Sunday Times brought over to me from deal old blighty. Tea and biscuits in hillbilly country here are virtually non-existent and we rely on friends to bring these necessities to us in bulk when they visit. There are one or two small shops scattered over this vast country that sell UK goods at vastly inflated prices so I can survive to a degree - I have been known to pay $6 for a small packet of Choc Digestives...consumed in one go I might add. The yanks don't do biscuits - they do cookies which are vile. We can buy 'British' tea here but you know, it doesn't taste the same - it's all down to the water I think. Reading your article on kettles made me chuckle as well - it took me months to find one here as everyone drinks coffee and use percolators. So enjoy your tea and biscuits and give a thought to us folk over here who are deprived of these basics!
Sue Edgeworth

Hi,
I sent the following to the Daily Mail as a contribution to Answers to Correspondents,` but it wasn’t published, so I thought I’d forward it on to you for no other reason than because I like it, and I hope you do too.
Q: What is the correct way to eat a chocolate digestive – with the chocolate side up or down?
Further to earlier answers, I find the best method is to do both, at the same time, that way you sandwich the chocolate in the middle and get a larger 'hit' of chocolate with every bite.
Alternatively, if limiting yourself to only one at a time, (or if your host is on the stingy side) then I would recommend eating it chocolate side up, making sure that you hold the biscuit with at least 3 of your fingers gripping the chocolate side, and your thumb on the digestive side.
That way, by the end of the biscuit, you should have a nice load of melted chocolate on your finger tips ready to lick off. Of course if you don't want this experience, then my advice would be to
hold the biscuit chocolate side down….
...but then you might find yourself sucking your thumb in public.
- Mrs N. Mott

Nicey replies: Well it can only add to our stature to publish the Daily Mail's cast offs. Anyhow the subject you raise has been debated many times on NCOTAASD and we think they should be eaten choc side up and that the biscuit has its polarity or 'up-ness' inverted by the addition of chocolate. McVities tell us that they consider the biscuits up-ness to be immutable and so it is technically upside down.

As for grips we advocate holding it by the edges with the thump and first three fingers spaced at 8,11,1 and 4 o'clock positions. Eating commences from the six o'clock direction. It also leaves the little finger free for elegance, always a consideration when demolishing packs of chocolate biscuits.

Dear Nicey (if that's your real name),
I thought you might appreciate this tale of a visit to Waterstones, a copy of your book "A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down", and the power of coincidence. It happened this lunchtime, and I am still in shock.
To cut a long story of aimless ambling short, I was flicking through said book in said Wasterstones, and stopped to read one completely random page. Imagine my astonishment to find that it contained an in-depth discussion of a Bagpuss episode featuring the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Mill, a horror story that I consider the equal of anything by Poe. I remember to this day the severe trauma I felt as a child when the whole enterprise was revealed as an Enron-style fantasy. In fact, it is my only memory of that portion of my childhood. I attribute this to the sheer power that biscuits have over the brain. To know that someone else has suffered like myself is more reassuring than you can imagine. For that, I thank you sir. Perhaps you should set up a support group?
I ought to add that I didn't buy the book in question, but it has been placed firmly atop my Christmas list, and that's pretty much legally binding.
I remain, etc.,
Tom

Nicey,
We managed to get this definitive answer from Mc Vities.
Cheers
Kerry White

We still regard the chocolate side as being on the bottom of the
biscuit, so perhaps people hold, eat and place them on plates upside
down.

Nicey replies: Of course I can see why they are saying that for technical reasons, and its quite a nice official answer because its the logical one rather than the instinctive one. However, among the masses the consensus was firmly with the polarity reverse idea. I'll put a poll up next week and we can all vote on it, that way everyone can choose the answer they like best.

At work we are getting into a heated debate about Chocolate Digestives and I was wondering if you can please clear it up for us.
Is the chocolate on the top or bottom of the biscuit? and explanation as to the answer might help us sleep better at night.
Having called Mc Vities we have been told that the chocolate is indeed on the bottom, but for some reason this just doesn't feel right.

Nicey replies: The chocolate is indeed applied to the bottom of the biscuit, but the consensus opinion (we have thrashed this out in the past) is that this then reverses the polarity of the biscuit so that the chocolate side is now the top. This is so blindingly obvious, as everybody eats them chocolate side up and puts them on plates chocolate side up and even photographs them for the pictures on the packet chocolate side up. Hope you sleep better tonight.